Tengai
Tengai is a fixed-question screening interview. An animated on-screen interviewer asks every candidate the same questions, in the same order. Candidates answer by voice, text or multiple choice. A scoring model checked by outside researchers scores the answers. Tengai’s own pages disagree about what happens next. Most say a recruiter decides. One says Tengai can screen and recommend candidates alone. Tengai keeps its price off its website.
Same questions for everyone, and Tengai’s pages disagree on who decides
Tengai runs the same fixed screening interview for every candidate, scored by a model outside researchers checked. Its own pages do not agree on who decides next.
You hire in the Nordics, in volume, for roles that repeat. You want a screening framework an outside researcher already checked. You are fine calling Tengai’s own sales team for a price.
You need written proof that a person always decides. You need to check a candidate’s identity, since Tengai never asks for one. You need a price and a service promise before your first call.
Not published. Tengai has no pricing page. You get a price from its sales team.
A twenty-minute fixed interview replaces the CV screen and first call
Each interview takes about twenty minutes, on the candidate’s own device, at any hour. If Tengai does not understand an answer, it asks the candidate to explain. It replaces the first CV screen and a recruiter’s first phone call, not what comes after.
Since 17 September 2026, recruiters write the questions and set their order and length. A recruiter can turn role requirements straight into a draft interview. They can edit it part-way through without losing answers already given. The scoring still runs on Tengai’s own model. Only one part, the Behavior score, is rated by a recruiter who listens to the answers.
The same update translates every question and template into Swedish, English, Norwegian and Danish. You write each question once. The spoken interview itself is in English or Swedish.
The score reads only the words a candidate gives, not their face or their voice. Tengai says it never uses facial recognition and has no access to a candidate’s appearance. Tengai says its language processing is tuned for different accents, so no accent scores lower. Reading a candidate’s emotions at work has been banned in the EU since 2 February 2025. Tengai’s own support checklist still tells a candidate to switch on their camera.
Tengai names five recruiting systems as partners, Teamtailor, Zerolime, Jobylon, Talenttech and Varbi. It scores a candidate and sends the shortlist back into whichever one invited them. Customers also run it through other systems. Byggmax runs it inside Jobylon. Vision runs it through ReachMee, which is not on that list.
Our guide to AI interview agents compares Tengai with tools built to decide on their own.
An outside study checked its scoring, and 95% of candidates finish
An outside researcher checked the scoring model
Dr Anders Sjöberg and Dr Sofia Sjöberg, of Psychometrics Sweden AB, checked Tengai’s scoring model in a 2020 study. They worked from outside the company. The study links a candidate’s answers to five standard personality traits. Research ties those traits to job performance.
Fixed questions stop recruiters improvising
Tengai says the fixed order is the design, not a limitation. It stops one recruiter asking different follow-up questions of different candidates.
Candidates get their own feedback and keep their answers
Every candidate gets written and spoken feedback right after the interview, showing how Tengai read their answers. They can revisit the interview for a year, through Tengai’s Talent Hub. Since the September 2026 release, they can also reuse a finished interview for a later application.
Most candidates finish the interview, and would take it again
Tengai’s own figures say 95% of candidates who start an interview finish it. 97% say they would be interviewed by Tengai again. None of these figures is tied to one named company. Each one measures how candidates felt, not whether the decision behind it was fair.
A six-person company, with no bias audit or published contract
Tengai AB employed six people in its most recent filed accounts. It reported a loss of about 7.9 million Swedish kronor (SEK), on revenue of SEK 1.0 million. Its parent company is Key People AB, inside the Luciholding AB group. Two people own most of the company, Dan Eric Berlin and Mats Björn Edlund. Each owns between a quarter and a half. Edlund became a part-owner of the wider group in 2019, when Tengai left the staffing firm TNG. He is now Tengai’s chief executive and board chair. No funding round with named investors is on record. Its owners put in SEK 14.1 million in 2024 and SEK 3.3 million in 2020. No lawsuit, acquisition or regulator complaint against Tengai AB is on record.
No bias audit of Tengai is published
Tengai’s 2020 study checks its scoring against personality theory, not who it screens out by group. New York City’s Local Law 144 requires a bias audit before you screen candidates there. That duty falls on the employer, not the vendor.
It calls itself compliant before the law applies
Tengai’s homepage calls it fully compliant with the EU AI Act. The Act’s employment duties start on 2 December 2027.
Get the contract terms in writing before you sign
Get the contract term, the notice period and an availability promise in writing before you sign.
It does not check a candidate’s identity
Tengai does not see the candidate, by design. It does not check an identity document or catch a stand-in reading answers with outside help. If fraud in your applicant pool already costs you money, this product will not catch it.
It fits Nordic employers hiring in volume for repeat roles
Byggmax ran nearly 2,000 interviews across 89 roles
Byggmax is a Swedish retailer. 200 of its own hiring managers use Tengai directly inside Jobylon. Byggmax says its manual admin work behind those candidates dropped 79%. Region Gotland, a Swedish regional authority, used Tengai for seasonal hiring, and won an award for the change.
Its customers fill hourly roles and specialist ones
Tengai’s customers use it to fill truck driver, care giver, retail and sales roles. Vision has around 300 employees at its Stockholm office. It cut its own interview process from two rounds to one, and put Tengai in the first.
Altran, SEB and DNB use it for specialist roles
Altran Technologies, a global engineering firm with more than 33,665 employees, uses Tengai to screen specialist and professional roles. The Nordic banks SEB and DNB use it too. DNB also runs it for its own summer internship programme.
Tengai quotes on request, and candidates can delete their data any time
There is no price on Tengai’s site, and no plan you choose yourself online. Sales runs through two named contacts, its head of sales and its commercial and customer success lead.
The smallest customer Tengai names with a stated headcount is Vision, at around 300 employees. Tengai publishes no floor on company size, seats or interview volume.
Candidates can listen to, redo or delete their own responses at any time, through Tengai’s Talent Hub. Their data is kept for up to 36 months, unless they object sooner. Tengai offers customers a data processing agreement. It keeps scoring data in a form it can trace for an audit.
You could also build a screen, an interview and a debrief on your own tracking system. We have mapped what that looks like. See it as an agent
Seven questions with a good answer
- Can Tengai ever screen and recommend a candidate without a person, in any account you sell? Good answer: No, not in any account we can buy, and that is written into the contract.
- Do you have a published bias audit of who this framework screens out by group? Good answer: Yes, with the report, the auditor and the date it covers.
- Your device checklist asks a candidate to switch on their camera. What is that image used for? Good answer: Nothing the score reads. Camera access is optional.
- How do we get our own candidates’ recordings and scores out in bulk if we leave? Good answer: A file within 30 days of the contract ending, at no extra cost.
- Is the price per interview, per seat, per hire, or one fee for the whole product? Good answer: One written figure, before the demo ends.
- Which of our own tracking systems can you read from, and send results back to, today? Good answer: A named list of systems, confirmed for our account.
- What can a candidate do if they want a person, or need a change for a disability? Good answer: A named contact and a clear alternative process, not just an email address.
Spotted Zebra publishes a bias audit. Metaview scores from a transcript.
If Tengai comes off your shortlist, the closest options are Spotted Zebra and Maki Mochi. Spotted Zebra also scores a candidate through an assessment. Metaview Screening is a third, if you want the interview to run from a tracking system. HireVue is a fourth, if you want the interview inside a wider hiring platform. Buying nothing is a fifth route.
If a recruiter who decides is what draws you to Tengai, look at Metaview Screening. Its score also comes from a transcript, not a face or a voice. Its only automatic step rejects a candidate who misses the deadline. It connects to 34 named tracking systems.
If a published bias audit matters to you, put Spotted Zebra beside Tengai. Spotted Zebra publishes its bias-audit results. Tengai publishes none. Maki, by contrast, lets a recruiter set filters that reject a candidate without a person.
If you want one supplier for a whole hiring platform, look at HireVue.
Buying nothing is a real option too. It makes sense if your roles rarely draw the volume Tengai is built for. It also makes sense if a role needs a real conversation, not the same fixed questions asked to everyone.
https://tengai.io/ · Tengai homepage · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/how-it-works · Tengai, how it works · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/how-it-works/candidates/ · How candidates experience Tengai’s interview · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/compliance · Tengai, data protection and compliance · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/ai-ethics/ · Tengai, AI ethics and bias mitigation · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/assessment/ · The science behind Tengai’s candidate assessment · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/product · Tengai product page · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/integration · Tengai integrations · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/our-story/ · How Tengai was created · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/support · Tengai support, device checklist · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/news/ · The Tengai newsroom · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/blog/tengai-4.0-structured-flexible-screening · Tengai 4.0 release, 17 Sep 2026 · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/blog/interview-robot-faq · Interview avatar FAQ, 2019 · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/blog/how-to-choose-eu-ai-act-compliant-hiring-software · Tengai on EU AI Act compliance, 15 Jun 2026 · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/blog/byggmax-ran-automated-screening-interviews · Byggmax case study, 24 Jun 2026 · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/blog/region-gotland-award-winning-recruitment-under-seasonal-pressure · Region Gotland case study, 11 Jun 2026 · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/blog/vision-improved-recruitment-efficiency-and-quality-with-tengai · Vision case study, 11 Jun 2026 · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/customer-stories/altran-automated-recruitment/ · Altran Technologies case study · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/customer-stories/dnb/ · DNB Bank case study · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/customer-stories/gavle-high-volume-hiring/ · Gävle Municipality case study · read 19 Sep 2026
https://tengai.io/customer-stories/upplands-bro-unbiased-candidate-screening/ · Upplands-Bro Municipality case study · read 19 Sep 2026
https://www.mynewsdesk.com/tengai-interview-robot/pressreleases/ai-interview-robot-tengai-goes-incorporated-focus-on-international-expansion-2895084 · Tengai AB incorporation announcement, 8 Jul 2019 · read 19 Sep 2026
https://www.ratsit.se/5591962377-Tengai_AB · Tengai AB, Swedish company register data · read 19 Sep 2026
https://www.nyc.gov/site/dca/about/automated-employment-decision-tools.page · New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, automated employment decision tools · read 19 Sep 2026
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32026R1744 · When the EU AI Act’s high-risk duties start to apply to employment systems · read 19 Sep 2026
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32024R1689 · Inferring a person’s emotions at work with AI, EU AI Act · read 19 Sep 2026